On random tasks and appointing bosses

Have you had a collection of random tasks that are constantly piling up? (Think ‘Deposit the check‘, ‘Get my DVD player repaired‘, ‘Replace my microwave while it’s under warranty‘ etc).

We are all too busy (of course) to get these things done. Often, these tend to be important and urgent and yet, fail to get done purely because they are ‘admin‘ tasks and we simply hate doing admin tasks! The Get-It-Done-Guy’s suggestion is to do the following –

1) Batch the random tasks altogether. This is first and most basic step to cutting down time wasted traveling, switching between tasks etc2) Get a boss. The biggest issue with personal admin tasks is that there is no boss to report to. So, the simple solution is to make a close friend ‘boss’ for the day, commit to them and explain that we would be calling them at 10AM, 2PM and 6PM (for example) to report progress on the day.3) Nike. Just do it, of course.

This sounds rather simple in theory but I’ve found it very powerful in practice. Thanks to inspiration from a mentor, I’ve a system in place that I’ve been following for the past 9 months that has helped me keep my life beyond work in order that involves the principle of making a friend ‘boss’ on an every day of the work-week basis. If you’d like to know more, do let me know in the comments/write in and I’ll be happy to help explain it.

For this week, if we find ourselves struggling to get stuff done at work, or at home, let’s try making a friend our ‘boss’ for the day. To make it fun, we could also add penalties and/or bonuses for ourselves and friends as well.